The Officer and the Proper Lady (11 page)

Julia took a deep breath and told herself she must be calm. Her nerves were in tatters, that was all. Her refusal of Thomas Smyth was a disaster, but there was nothing that would be helped by tears or the vapours or panic. At least she had the money Captain Grey had won for her at the races. That might pay for a few gowns, but it was no substitute for a husband. She managed to walk with composure to retrieve her wrap. When she turned back, Hal was at the door.

‘I have a cab. Come along, no-one is watching, just round this corner.'

‘Thank you.' She let him help her in, then stared as he joined her and closed the door. ‘What are you doing?' The horse set off at a walk in the opposite direction to home. ‘And where are we going?'

‘I am abducting you.' Hal sat back, crossed one long leg over the other and regarded her gravely in the borrowed light from the street. Her alarm must have shown, for he relented and explained. ‘I have told the driver to walk round and round the Parc until told otherwise.'

‘Oh. Thank you.'
Abducting me indeed. If only he would! At least I would not have to make any decisions.
‘I suppose I ought not to go home until I have worked out what to say.' Her mind felt curiously blank and rather bruised.

‘What has happened?' Hal asked, his voice deep and soft in the shadows. ‘Who has upset you?'

‘At least you do not ask me what
I
have done, which is what Mama will ask, and she will be quite right,' she replied wryly. ‘It was all my fault. I have just lost another suitor.'

‘What? That prosy bore Smyth?'

‘Yes, although as you have never spoken to him, I do not know how you can be so judgmental.'

‘He stalks around with a look of moral superiority on his face. Either that or he has a permanent bad smell under his nose,' Hal said with a distinct lack of charity.

‘He certainly has high standards,' Julia said with a sigh. ‘But although I am prone to an occasional irregularity of moral purpose and exhibit an impulsive lack of discretion, he was sure I could be set on the right path with suitable guidance and can be a model of rectitude in the parish. Only I did not think I could stand it.'

‘I should think not.' Hal sounded aghast. ‘What irregularities and impulsiveness, for goodness sake?'

‘That favour at the races.'

He groaned.

‘And he saw me leave the room with you earlier tonight.'

‘So I have lost you another suitor. I am sorry, Julia. It is I who has been showing the impulsive lack of discretion.'

‘Oh, he would still have taken me,' she said, realizing as she spoke how cross that patronising attitude had made her feel. ‘I turned him down.'

‘Good for you.'

‘Mama is going to be so disappointed in me. I have had this chance to make all our lives so much more secure and I have just thrown it away.'

‘Surely when she sees how you feel about him?'

She shrugged, de pressed.

‘Has he hurt you very much? Were you very fond of him, Julia?' Hal leaned forward and took her hand, stroking it as though to comfort her.

‘Fond of him? Certainly not, how could I be when I lo—' She froze, the two betraying words trembling on the tip of her tongue.
Love you. I love you.

H
al went very still, while the warm pressure of his hand through the silk of her white evening gloves sent her erratic pulse wild. For an appalled moment, Julia thought she must have said the words aloud. ‘Lo…
Loathe
being lectured like that,' she finished, desperately.

‘I see,' he said, and she could not read the underlying emotions in his voice. ‘What will you do now?'

‘Keep parading myself on the Marriage Mart,' she said, beyond keeping up pretences with him. ‘Before Napoleon escaped there wasn't much point—anyone who might have been interested was as hard up as we were. But with all the new arrivals, and Lady Geraldine being so kind, Mama thought it worth the investment in gowns.'

‘It's a cut-throat business for a young woman, isn't it?' he asked, shifting on the seat so he was directly in front of her and could take both her hands in his.
Just like Thomas Smyth at the races,
Julia thought. But then she had felt mildly embarrassed, now she was scarcely aware of her surroundings, only of the man sitting opposite her, his hair pale in the
flickering, intermittent light, his face turned down to their clasped hands.

‘My sisters both had their Seasons,' he went on, as though he was thinking aloud. ‘But it is easier for them, I suppose. They both have titles, dowries; their father is an earl. Not that Honoria found her husband that way.' There was amusement in his voice, not disapproval.

‘Honoria is like you?' Julia asked, fighting with the urge to lean forward, kiss the sharp angle of his cheek bone that was all she could see of his face.

‘Lord, yes!' he laughed. ‘Hence the trouble.' For a moment she thought he would explain, but then he said, as though his words were a logical continuation of what he had just been talking about, ‘Has Hebden made further contact with you?'

‘The jeweller? No. It was strange though. When he was looking at the pieces he mentioned you.'

‘What?' Hal sat bolt upright and released her hands. Julia just managed not to grab his back.

‘He implied that he had heard gossip that made him assume I was selling the jewellery to finance my—oh, husband-hunting is what he meant, I suppose.' Hal went very still. ‘He said something about the reverend, the widower and the rake. You are the only rake I know,' she said with an attempt at a laugh. ‘I remarked to Mama that no doubt someone saw us at the review and gossiped.'

‘So he thinks I am a suitor for your hand?' Hal sounded decidedly worried.

Julia's stomach ached with embarrassment. He thought she was trying to imply he was courting her. ‘No, I think he was only…'

‘If he thinks that, then you are in danger,' Hal said bluntly, and she realized his anxiety was for that, not that she might assume anything about his intentions. ‘He bears a deep and
savage grudge against my family and two others. He was responsible for driving my sister from Society, he kid napped my brother's wife and tried to ruin her sister. The infantry officer you saw me with in the hall—Rick Bredon?' She nodded. ‘Hebden is his step-sister's half-brother and is causing her new husband sleep less nights, believe me.'

‘You think that if he mistakenly believes I am…important to you in some way, he might attack me too? Although why should he think that, beyond some foolish gossip?'

‘Smyth thought it,' Hal pointed out. ‘And if Hebden is watching now, he knows we are alone in circumstances that would ruin you if they became public. Damn it, if I had had any notion that he knew of a link between us, I would never have got into this con founded carriage with you. The man is obsessed.'

Julia almost asked what the Carlows had done to attract such virulent hatred, then good manners caught up with her. If Hal wanted her to know, he would tell her. ‘And you
are
important to me,' he added, cutting back to her last comment.

‘Then let us hope your Mr Hebden considers friends unimportant in his campaign of vengeance.'

‘Is that what we are, Julia?' Hal took her hand again, apparently interested only in tracing the fine lines of sewing that shaped the back of her glove. The movement of his finger made her want to shiver.

‘I hope so,' she said brightly. Then the recollection of the talk in the grand salon came back to her and a shudder ran through her. ‘Hal, is it true? Is Bonaparte at the frontier?'

‘Yes.' The eagerness in the single word told her all she needed to know: Hal Carlow was itching to get into battle.

‘How soon will it be?'

‘Before the battle? I do not know. Not very long: days not weeks, but it depends which way Bonaparte moves once he
crosses the Sambre. Do you and your mother want to leave for Antwerp now?'

‘If we go, it would be because we believe Wellington—all of you—will lose,' she said slowly. ‘Are you telling me that is what to expect?'

‘No. But you can have no concept of what a city close to a great battle would be like. I have seen it, in the Peninsula.'

‘I do not want to run away,' she said, realizing as she spoke how passionately she felt it, although not why. ‘I would feel a coward. You—the Army—will not run.'

‘No,' he said again, and his hands on hers were stilled. ‘We will not run. But this is Bonaparte, one of the greatest generals in history.'

‘We have Wellington,' she pro tested, shaken by his words.

‘Who has never met Bonaparte in the field. I want you to leave, Julia. I want you to go to the baron as soon as it is certain the French have crossed in to Belgium. Promise me that.'

‘I promise I will not do anything to put Mama and Phillip in danger,' she said, not understanding why she was equivocating, but knowing that she needed to.

‘Good,' he said as though she had taken a great weight off his mind. ‘And now, you must go home.'

Julia watched as he lowered the window and leaned out to call up to the driver, unashamedly admiring the flexibility with which he moved and the line of his lean body. Here she was, in a closed carriage, at night, with a notorious rake, and he did not so much as flirt with her. He had held her hands as though she was one of his sisters, that was all.

If I was bolder, knew what I was doing, I could en courage him to kiss me,
she thought, biting her lip as he sat down again.
With passion. But what if he does not want to again?
I would sink with shame. He doesn't want a
good
girl. He wants someone with experience.

And then it was too late. The carriage drew up, Hal opened the door and jumped out to hand her down, and she thought,
I should sink for shame just thinking about it.

‘Good night, Major. And thank you for seeing me home.'

‘Good night, Miss Tresilian,' he said with equal formality, raising her hand to his lips.

Through the silk, she could feel the heat of his breath, the firm pressure of his lips, and her breath caught in her throat as he released her and turned back to the waiting carriage.

‘Will you be at the duchess's ball tomorrow night?' he asked, one foot on the step.

‘Yes—if the enemy is not at the gates,' she managed in an attempt at lightness.

‘I will see you then, I hope. And if not, remember what you promised me.' And he was gone.

Julia climbed the stairs to their apartment, her brain spinning. If Napoleon advanced, then Mama and Phillip must go to Antwerp with the baron, but she would not. There was nothing she could do, but she would not leave Brussels while Hal was fighting, in danger. To do so would feel like running away, deserting him. How she would manage to stay, she had no idea. But, she resolved as she reached the door, she was not going to tell Mama about Mr Smyth either, not until at least the day after tomorrow, after the ball, after they knew when the battle would be.

 

‘Let me out here,' Hal called up to the driver as the carriage rattled past the duke's house opposite the Parc. He was too restless to sit in a stuffy carriage, too energised by the intimacy with Julia, not to walk.

He paid off the man and began to make his way downhill.
He did not under stand what he felt for Julia Tresilian, but it was powerful, too powerful to resist without pain.

The physical yearning for her was stronger than for any woman he had ever wanted, but perhaps that was simply the result of denying himself another taste of her. The urge to protect her was as visceral as the instinct he had to shield his sisters from harm. He liked her. He liked her honesty and her intelligence and her humour. He had stopped drinking and had not looked at another woman for her, although she had not asked it of him.

He admired the dogged way she set about husband-hunting when he knew she found it distasteful. Through his carelessness he had scared off her two serious suitors. Hal's pace slowed until he stopped; he put one foot on a low wall and looked out at the lights of the Lower Town. He discovered he was examining his conscience: an un familiar exercise.

Was it carelessness or had he intended to drive those men off? He was not sure he wanted to know the truth about that. And he certainly did not relish telling Julia that the remaining candidate, Colonel Williams, had maintained a mistress for many years and had done so when his wife was alive. But he would do if he thought she was going to marry the man: she should know something like that.

So, now she was back where she had begun, only out of pocket, perhaps in debt, for all her gowns. Would that make him an acceptable suitor?

The idea, the very fact he was even contemplating such a thing, shook him. And yet, here he was, thinking about marriage. He had a small estate of his own, she might like that. Her mother and Phillip could live there. He could afford to bring her up to Town for the Season every year, when he was in England.

When he was in England. A group of soldiers with their whores passed him, drunk and cheer fully noisy, but Hal
hardly heard them. He was a soldier, that was what he did. But what if there was no more soldiering to be done? Could he settle down like his brother, manage his land, raise a brood of children? They'd be quite hand some children, he decided, almost dreamily, putting together his features and Julia's.

Someone jostled him from behind. Hal swung round, the light dress sword sliding out of the scabbard, the hilt firm in his hand, and the man, a hulking figure in a shabby great coat, shambled off hurriedly.

A drunk? A thief? Or a little reminder from Hebden? Hebden, who associated Julia with him, who could have watched them tonight. It seemed difficult to realize that this elusive and implacable enemy was the same seven year old who had played with Marcus in the woods and streams for a long hot summer while Hal, two years younger, had tagged along behind, falling over his wooden sword and demanding piggyback rides.

And now their old playmate did not just want the Carlow men to suffer, but wanted to make them do it through their women as well. Was Julia Hal's woman? Would she want to be? He thrust the slim blade back into its scabbard and walked on, all his senses alert now. She was, he thought without vanity, aware of him as a man, although she was too innocent to recognize what that meant. She liked him and trusted him or she would not have gone with him tonight or confided as easily as she had.

And there had been that moment when he had asked her about her feelings for Smyth and he thought she was going to say she loved someone. Him?

If only he under stood what that meant. Marcus had gone up like dry wood in the path of a forest fire when he met Nell, even though he had every reason to distrust the woman who was now his wife. Hal supposed he could write and ask how you knew when you were in love. How you knew if a woman
loved you. And he could be teased for the rest of his life, he concluded, trying to imagine his brother's face if he ever got such a letter.

Unless they got the order to march between now and ten tomorrow night, he and Julia would both be at the duchess's ball, he realized, feeling rather more apprehensive than he had last time he had eyed a row of French artillery all pointed in his direction at short range.

He reached the main street leading to the Anvers Gate and had to wait while a stream of carriages and carts rumbled past, all intent, he supposed, on running for Antwerp. Julia did not seem to have the same sense of urgency about evacuating Brussels as those people did. He sent up a silent prayer of thanks for vander Helvig and his amiable agreement to look after the Tresilians.

‘Carlow?' Will Grey was standing on the steps of their hotel, hands on his hips and an expression of bemused amusement on his face. ‘What the devil's the matter with you? You've a damn-fool look on your face, you're muttering and that last carriage nearly ran you down.'

‘Will.' Hal looked at his best friend's smiling face and found he had no idea what he wanted to say, or do.

‘Bloody hell, you've done it!' Will bounded down the steps and buffeted him hard enough on the back to send him staggering.

‘What?'

‘Asked Miss Tresilian to marry you.' Will took him by the shoulders and stared at him. ‘My God, the worst rake in the Hussars, leg-shackled. She's a brave woman if she's taking you on, I'll say that for her.'

‘I haven't asked her.' Hal got a grip on the railings and fended his friend off. He really could not face being warmly embraced by Will Grey, whiskers and all, on a public street. And his friend's words ran through him like a sabre thrust.
To ask a girl like Julia to marry a man like him was not the action of a gentleman. His honour would not let him do it, and he would just have to live with the consequences.

‘Why the hell not?'

‘For all the reasons you said. I can't ask it of her, she's too innocent to under stand what I am, the life I've lived.'

‘Damn it…' Grey blundered to a halt, his face reflecting both his agreement and his regret.

‘Look, Will, if I don't…if I'm not in a position to look after her, will you get her back to England? Ask my brother Stanegate to keep an eye on her?'